


The Dinner Suit

by threesipsmore



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7045396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesipsmore/pseuds/threesipsmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanji's a bit tired of weddings, having narrowly avoided one himself not too long ago. However, if plunging his poor soul into another one will appease their current situation, then he'll suck it up and play along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's nothing new.

There's this disgraced family off on the outskirts of a paradise island, a family that had been swindled of all their coin and titles by a spiteful man. It's clearly a case of underhanded harassment. Of course, naturally, the Strawhats come to find these people friendly and meek and Luffy decides with a resolute fist and a mouthful of raisin bread that they're going to help  _dammit_.

They just need to get to a certain Sir Duncan, cousin of the Duchess, to whom, conveniently, simply  _adored_  weddings. 

Sanji's heart had twitched unpleasantly at the word.

It's said that if she finds interest in you, then you can be sure to expect her invitation (powdered in gold and smelling of hickory) to hold the affair at her estate amongst the rose gardens and ivory fountains. So Nami, clever little tangerine that she is, decides to marry Sanji and Robin off, to have them meet with this Duchess and woo her over. Though she adores weddings, she spares only enough finances to cover one gallant affair every year. Luckily for them, that time of the year had yet to pass.

Sanji doesn't argue, because of course he'd been the only viable option. Zoro was a moron, Usopp was skittish, and Franky had no tact. 

They'd have to beat out the visiting, grabby-handed nobles and win her favor, and they decided to do so not with honorifics or fancy accessories or faux personalities, but with reputation.

Who wouldn't want to host a notorious pirate wedding, with an entourage of over 500 million berries in bounties in the front row alone?

If they win her over, then they have clear access to her cousin via the reception, and ample opportunity to shake him down of the land titles and dowry he'd stolen. No one would be the wiser.

Problem is, Sanji isn't entirely too fond of weddings right this moment, just having narrowly avoided a rather costly one not but just months ago.

Problem is, not even the dapper sight of Robin in a white gown could ease the worms in his gut.

Problem is, he makes the mistake of running into the Duchess in the wedding boutique with a certain irritable bit of seaweed merely steps behind him. And the Duchess, with a certain gleam to her gaze, had expressed  _immense_  interest and pleasant shock at the idea of the swordsman and the cook getting married.

  _Shit._

* * *

 

"I know quite a bit about your crew, or I know enough from what the papers divulge. They did a special on you guys a while back. You used to work at the Baratie, correct? A chef there too?"

Sanji smiles obligingly. "I'm surprised you've heard of it all the way out here."

"I haven't," she shrugs, "but the papers say it's a nice place. That where you met the swordsman?"

They pick through colored fabric. She hasn't necessarily invited them yet, but she'd fluttered about them a little at first and announced vaguely that she'd help them out for the day. She'd stopped by to consider colors for those nobles that'd been docked splendidly at the port across town, but those egg colored curtains have now been tossed aside in favor of their own person.

Zoro stands back there, gaze distant and uninterested. Sanji wants to kick him, but their new impromptu cover might be ruined if they go about acting like they usually do. So he taps his foot against the floor every so often instead, biting into his cheek.

"Met the whole lot of them there, though he'd been a bit of a brute back then," he's saying as she plucks a field of blue from the bulk, holding it up to his complexion.

She smiles. "Even the drapes must compliment the bride, or," she furrows her brow, "grooms? I have to say, this is all really quite fun, I've never held a ceremony for two men before."

Sanji pauses, and even Zoro seems to tune in with a twitch of his ears. She was going to hold the ceremony?

"Excuse me," Sanji starts politely, but she cuts him off abruptly by tossing him the heavy roll, thumbing through a few more. 

"Of course, you'll find no better than my estate. I only spare time for one a year, for quality's sake as I'm sure you understand, so you better count your blessings that the two of you are entirely too fascinating to pass up. The swordsman and the cook," she says once more, considering it with relish, "I can't imagine the amount of people that'd want to come and see it!"

 Zoro frowns at her arrogance and Sanji blocks him from her line of sight.

 "We can't thank you enough." 

* * *

 

"Listen," Sanji's rough voice fills the silence, "we gotta do this for the captain okay, and for those poor sacks of dirt on the outskirts. They've been bullied and harassed into giving up everything they own. Unless you wanna make a scene we do this the way Nami planned it, and we be grateful it's working out like it is."

Zoro grunts, leaning back with his good eye closed, arms pillowing his head. "Fine by me cook."

"Oh?" Sanji grumbles, "Then stop acting like you're part of the décor. Chat her up a little, feign interest- I don't care what you do, just stop acting like you couldn't give two shits about this wedding, yeah?"

Sanji puffs irately at his smoke. In all honesty, perhaps at least one groom behaving in a disconnected manner wasn't all that suspicious. There'd been plenty enough at the Baratie receptions. Unlike Sanji, most men were Neanderthals.

He just didn't like being in this alone, and even the moss-head could make for good company if he tried.

"Your rings," Nami rushes in, hair in disarray. Twenty minutes left before their sappy carriage ride. The Duchess had wanted to give them a proper tour, as if they needed any more convincing. Zoro had attempted to opt out of it, but Sanji had plucked him by the ear and dragged him along, robbing him dry of all liquor.

"I had to dig through a shit load of our bulk to find two that matched closely enough. Who wants the big rock?"

Sanji accepts it after an unhelpful silence, wiggling his fingers a little in the light as Zoro slips his on without a second glance.

Nami ducks into the bathroom when someone knocks on the door of their cute little cottage rental, and the drive up is pleasant enough in the hush of the cart. Sanji regrets that later, however, when the Duchess points out that the driver had remarked on their worrisome silence.

"A little pre-marriage dispute," she ventures a guess, plucked brows arching up shapely.

While Sanji's trying to think of a lie he notices the whispers and stares of the gardeners.  _Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro._  Still they insisted on calling him that?

He wondered why none of them whispered his name, why so few murmured  _Blackleg Sanji, recently acknowledged as Sanji Vinsmoke._

"Ah," the Duchess seems to grin then, fanning herself a bit in the afternoon heat. "Jealousy, maybe? Perhaps you don't like all the attention he gets? I suppose I can understand, it's one thing to have that _one_ attractive friend, but to have that  _forever_  attractive partner, can get a bit daunting for sure."

Sanji does his damnedest not to make a face. If anyone was the attractive friend here, it was him.

"Yeah, cook," Zoro smirks, and Sanji damns the idiot's selective hearing, "don't be so jealous. You're always wearing nice things to try and make yourself look better anyway. Just think of me as another pretty accessory."

"Oh shut it you moss-headed freak," Sanji snaps, Zoro grinning though the blood has rushed from the blonde's face and down into the queasy pits of his stomach. Shit.

The Duchess merely snorts, muttering something about how life was merely foreplay and continues on, pointing out the intricacies of her yard. Sanji falls back to bump shoulders with the idiot. "Dammit Zoro," he whispers, "just be  _nice_ for once."

"What," Zoro taunts, "can't control yourself?"

"Oh yeah," Sanji hisses, "you're simply  _irresistible_ , it's a wonder I haven't kicked you in the teeth yet."

Zoro's finally got some life to him, and Sanji frowns, wondering if he should just rile the guy up every now and then as a preemptive to conversation. Better to be the couple that bickers than not a couple at all.

"Hey moron," Sanji whispers, "don't let all this attention get to your fat head. They're only looking at you because they don't know why a guy like me would ever settle for a lowly primate like yourself, got that?"

"Oh yeah?” Zoro takes the bait, "The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

The Duchess points out a lovely tumble of violets trimmed neatly into a heart.

"Means that no matter what those people think, the Duchess here obviously favors a cultured individual like myself."

C'mon moss-head, take the bait.

"The fuck would I care if she likes me or not?"

Dammit you stupid moron.

"Everything alright boys?"

"Couldn't be better," Sanji forces on a stiff smile, and he can just feel the amusement radiating off of him. He'd be getting a boot to the teeth later for sure. First, Sanji had to make up for appearances.

* * *

 

"Oh no, I completely get it," she dismisses, and Sanji stops mid drink. "You do?"

"Sure," she sips at her cup daintily, "couples like you, I see them all the time. Rile each other up a bit, throw around a few haughty words, snap at each other some with bared teeth and all. They seem to be the happier ones in bed anyway, that’s for sure. Of course, who am I to stop them, I'd invited them after all, and I am nothing if not understanding. I must know though, so as to warn the night maids, but do you intend to make a mess of my beds as well?”

She's smiling coyly at him, as if hinting that there were no wrong answer here, but still he splutters a bit and drowns his blush in that bitter tea. He's getting horrible flashbacks of Kamabakka, flashbacks that he shoves down with a couple of finger sandwiches. Good thing Zoro was out with the cousins, hunting or some shit.

"No m'am, I think we'll keep our privacy private, if you don't mind."

She laughs a little, and they enjoy the oncoming meal in quaint silence.

He thinks maybe for once it's all going well. She mistakes their normal behavior for feistiness and Zoro is being a relatively good boy and not saying anything too stupid or ape-ish.

It's when she's having them fitted for tuxes (Sanji spouts his measurements off like a grocery list) that the deeper meaning of it all seems to hit the both of them simultaneously.

Their eyes meet from the atop the pedestals, a bit wide in understanding that  _holy shit_  they were getting married. This was. . . this was all for a greater end, but in reality, in all actuality, it was still very much  _real_. There’d probably be certificates of authenticity to go along with it even. 

They were getting married.

“Hey shit cook,” Zoro rumbles despite himself, “you’re not looking so good.”

The man taking his measurements peers up at him, and yeah, Sanji can tell he doesn’t look good because his hands have gone clammy and his neck is a bit warm in that uncomfortable cold-hot kinda way.

Good thing that woman wasn’t here, good thing she’d left it up to the poor old soul down there who fidgeted every time Zoro made a displeased noise. Maybe this man would tell her, as the driver had— he’d tell her that the cook had this horrible look to his face, one that was very obviously plagued with regret.

Zoro barks at the man to hurry up with it and they leave there in quick stride.

“Zoro,” Sanji breathes finally, “Zoro, we’re  _getting married_.”

“Yeah,” the idiot snorts, though his antsy fingers betrayed his careful calm, “glad you caught on.”

Sanji’s incessant chewing of his unlit smoke seems to bother Zoro, who groans and rubs at the back of his neck in turn. “Listen, it’s not that big of a deal. As long as it doesn’t mean anything to you, then it doesn’t mean anything at all, you got that love cook?"

Sure. Sure, he’s got that. Definitely.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Don't lie moss-head.

Zoro wiggles his nose a bit, considering himself carefully for once. “Yeah. But I guess- well at some point it might’ve bothered me more, but we’ve been though so much bullshit already that it kinda makes walking down the aisle seem like an unpleasant detour. Literally the worst that could happen is that I gotta kiss your ugly face.” Even as he says it his expression morphs a little, a flush to his ears.

Sanji would’ve retorted, really, but those flashbacks are kinda hitting him harder now, and he kinda chokes a little in surprise.

“Oh,” a small smile curls across Zoro’s face then, “finally backing down from a challenge, are we?”

Stupid idiot, stupid stupid  _stupid_.

“Will it be your first, mossman,” Sanji teases instead, if only to stall his own mind. And it works too, when Zoro gives him this funny look.

_ “Yeah.” _

* * *

 

The Duchess finds them later, bringing along a line of women that flaunt flowers and heavy center pieces.

Sanji wonders if he should tell Zoro.

It’ll be his first too.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh, we were _real_ shocked,” Nami agrees readily, “they were always at each other’s throats in the beginning. Of course, I’d always said it was like foreplay, but, y’know, boys mature slower and all that.”

Robin pats Zoro’s shoulder, smiling all the while. “We were quite surprised to find them suddenly engaged, that’s for sure.”

 _Weren’t we all_ , Sanji wants to say.

The Duchess is watching the gardeners with a stern eye.

“You’re in an alliance with the Surgeon of Death, yes? Shall I expect him as well?”

“Nah,” Nami waves it off, “this was sort of an impromptu stop. We kinda just wanna go with the flow, y’know? We thought for sure we’d be marrying them in someone’s backyard. We really appreciate all the effort you’re putting into this.”

As much as he loves small talk between ladies, Sanji soon finds himself preoccupied with the way Zoro insists on tugging at his tie, shoulders rolling uncomfortably in his suit.

They were to sample the food today, food that required evening wear and dainty little forks and a springly garden party.

Nami admires the estate, cooing over the little treasures in the gardens, glass bulbs billowing with last night's rain.

If it’d been difficult feigning an engagement with Zoro before, it was even harder now, what with the crew watching them all sly-like as they were.

But that’s not what bothers him most.

What bothers him most is that the Duchess had no problem in believing their farce. There wasn’t a hint of doubt to that woman.

He’d been sure they’d be playing the _fake-it-till-you-make-it_ game. Instead, he found himself in a more troubling position.

An aesthetically believable relationship with a mossy ape.

“Stop that,” Sanji hisses, though he were sweltering as well under the glare of the sun.

“Shut up shit cook,” Zoro growls, pawing at the tie with large hands.

“You idiot,” Sanji snaps, yanking the man's hands away, “this isn't exactly cheap, y'know. You won't have an allowance for a good few years if you wrinkle that any more- that means no hard liquor, you degenerate.”

“Get out of my face, cook,” Zoro bites out as they butt heads, snarling. He's got an irritated flush to his face, that or a rather nasty sunburn.

And still yet, Sanji comes to find, the Duchess doesn’t doubt them.

* * *

 

“We’re not doing vows.”

This man that she’d sent, this man with the feathered pen and the rolled paper, he stands there, utterly complexed by Sanji’s bland face blocking his entrance into their room. She’d given them cozy quarters overlooking the garden, and now she’s given them an old man.

“I’ve been instructed to inscribe the vows—”

“Shit cook says we’re not doing them, then we’re not doing them,” Zoro yawns from somewhere behind him.

He closes the door, though he’s not sure if it’s the hinges or the man that’d squeaked at the effort.

“What are vows?”

Sanji pauses, fingers hovering above the buttons of his shirt. “No way,” he says, “you don’t know? Then why didn’t you want to do them?”

Zoro doesn’t bother opening his eyes as he lays there on that bed. “The back of your neck was red. If it’s enough to get the perv cook embarrassed, then I imagine I probably won’t like it either.”

Sanji huffs, wetting his lips at the absence of his usual smoke. “Dumbass.”

Zoro sits up with an angry scowl, but Sanji turns away from him, plucking at the buttons of his shirt with a sigh. “You moron, it’s like a list of promises or something that you say to each other. Me and you, we’ll be parroting some old geezer instead, mimic him a little, say our _I do’s,_ bat our lashes and go on our merry fucking way.”

Zoro plops back down against the mattress in thought. “Vows huh?”

The wind beats against the window, and Sanji suspects it'll be a dark night.

Sanji’s slipping into his night shirt when Zoro speaks up once more. “Oh cook oh cook, not much thicker than dead old Brook, how about you ditch that stick in your ass, and pass me a good ol’ shot glass?”

Sanji throws his dirty laundry at him, barking angrily at the idiot: “That’s not a vow, you cretin, and it doe _sn’t need to rhyme!”_

Zoro snorts, grin cocked. “Oh, can’t reciprocate?”

Sanji hops into the bed beside him, careful to keep his distance, scowl heavy on his lips. He has to think for a good moment, squinting at the green bastard. He looked particularly ape-ish today, didn't he, laying there all pleased as he were. 

“Fine then, I’ll give you a vow, I’ll even make it rhyme a little.” Sanji pulls at the duvet, yanking it from under the other man, the swordsman yelping in indignation.

“If you keep talking about sticks and my ass, swordsman, then I’ll be sure to shorten your lifespan.”

* * *

 

“No vows?”

“We like to keep our privacy private,” Sanji reiterates, banking on their understanding the day before last.

The Duchess purses her lips and toys with her food but says nothing more. A small, devilish part of him hopes that she suspects something.

“I can understand it,” she finally says, raspberry to her lips then, “pirates are a different sort, aren’t they? You’re men of action, not words. Isn’t that the basis of your relationship? I see you guys at each other all the time, even your nagging is aggressively physical. I imagine just words alone don’t do it for you.”

What a horrifically understanding woman.

“You’re too kind,” he twitches a smile.

He can only hope that Nami was making headway with that Sir Duncan fellow. He hated for her to have to use her undeniable charms on someone as piggish as that man, but she’d been adamant about her abilities to impress the richer generation. Before she'd met Luffy she'd been conning cruise ships and the like.

Zoro had said it was because she was a natural snob, and he can only be glad she hadn’t been around to hear it.

“Aye, cook.”

Sanji angles his head back only to blanch at the sight of Zoro in the doorway, streaked in mud and grime. “You idiot,” Sanji scrambles around the sofa, “what’re you doing, look at the mess you're making!”

Zoro lifts something dead and plump in his hand, face betraying no shame. “Look, I caught something. You can cook it, right?”

“You don’t have to catch things here,” Sanji is hissing, “we’re guests, Zoro, _guests.”_

“I don’t mind mister chef,” the Duchess is smiling, “go ahead, use my kitchen, the staff should have vacated it by now. Be sure to come down after you’re done for the cake selection and a chilled luncheon.”

He doesn’t really feel like cooking whatever it is that moron is holding, but he appreciates the opportunity to escape the tearoom.

He grabs Zoro by the collar of his shirt (the Duchess insisted on stuffing the angry swordsman into the finer sleeves of society, though still he insists on airing the shirts out through an open front). He drags him away with a few muttered curses.

“So what is that thing, anyway?”

Zoro lifts the dried clump of hair and blood once more, Sanji stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“I dunno, kept popping out of the ground, had some killer claws on it. Some nasty yellow teeth too.”

Sanji snorts, digging for a smoke. “Sounds about as appetizing as wet seaweed.”

Zoro peers over at him, face scrunched up. “You trying to pick a fight?”

Sanji pauses in his search, grinning. “You have to ask?”

_Roronoa Zoro._

There’s three of them there, maids in their traditional attire. Two hover about an open door while the third picks through the laundry sack. 

Still they whispered his name, as if it were a sacred (cursed) thing. “They sure do like you, huh,” the cook mutters. Zoro shrugs.

_And the cook._

Never has the term bothered him before, never has it itched at his throat so strangely. At least when Zoro snarls _cook_ it’s in slight recognition of his position in the crew, of his position amongst his nakama.

A cook is an important asset. Irreplaceable and detrimental if missing.

He wonders if that’s understood outside the pirate convention. The cook on a marine vessel was there merely to supply energy and substance, but on a pirate ship it was more intimate than that. The cook is a cook because that’s what he is, not because it’s been assigned to him.

“Hey cook,” Zoro starts, and Sanji notices, albeit hesitantly, the different connotations between those maids and the swordsman.

Affection.

They had affection between them, him and Zoro, even if it was the more unreasonable sort.

“You ever notice the difference between pirates and marines,” Sanji says instead, cutting the man off. Those foreign eyes follow them until Sanji tugs at the other for a rather sharp turn.

Zoro grunts, whatever he’d been meaning to say still brewing behind his eyes, stealing his thoughts.

“You get paid to be a marine. It’s a job. At the end of the day, once you put away your fancy boots and cloak, you’re no different from any other guy. But being a pirate,” Sanji’s fingers fidget for that missing cigarette box once more, “is a lifestyle. You don’t ever stop being a pirate. It’s a way of life, not a job. You don’t get paid for it, you don’t get promotions and benefits. You steal money because you’re a pirate, and because you’re a pirate you steal. You’re notorious because you’re an outlaw, and because you’re notorious you find yourself wanted. There’s no uniform to take off, no badge to put away.”

Zoro’s eyes are intent on him, then. “What’s this all about cook?”

Sanji shrugs. “Just something I’ve been thinking about, _Roronoa Zoro_.”

_People will always be looking at us, they will always know who we are and what we are. The swordsman and the cook. There’s no folding that up and putting it in a drawer somewhere. No getting fired or finding other work. Raleigh will always be the Dark King, wanted and infamous and hiding._

It was just a thought.

He remembers the kitchens, remembers when the Duchess had glided between stainless steel stoves and marble busts. She’d thought to impress him, but more than anything he missed his wooden, checkered-tiled kitchen.

Whatever Zoro had been about to say is now lost.

Sanji skins that repulsive creature, merely wanting something to do with his hands. Still, that fridge over there was studded and overflowing with delicacies. Why the swordsman had thought to butcher this ugly creature was beyond him.

“Look at that,” Sanji murmurs, “it’s got three livers.”

Zoro had sat himself down at the island, fingers drumming against his jaw wearily.

“Can you make soup?”

“I can make anything,” Sanji snorts derisively.

He cuts around the organs, brow furrowing in thought. “Zoro? What did you eat today?”

“Hm?” Gods how Sanji hated that lazy drone of his sometimes. He imagines him scratching as his bare stomach now like some farm boy, yawning even.

“Dunno. Eggs?”

“And yesterday,” Sanji speaks slowly, his brain trying to catch up with his mouth, “what did you eat then?”

Zoro grunts. “What does it matter?”

Sanji digs the knife into the board, turning on him. “Have you been eating?”

Zoro, slouched like a lazy cat, eyes him with guarded intent. “I’ve been eating just fine love cook, I can eat anything.”

They’ve been eating separately as of late. Sure they taste test together, but even then the swordsman half-asses it. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, I’ve been eating. It’s just not very good, is it? Everything is powdered and sweet and shit. Makes my tongue burn.”

He’s grumbling now about weddings and sweet stuff and Sanji doesn’t comment that he used to gorge his stomach on anything just as well as Luffy, that he’d been drinking piss liquor and fatty foods when Sanji had first met him.

“Just come to me,” Sanji turns around quickly, hiding what he knows to be a troubled look, “I’ll fix you something when you’re hungry. I’m sure they won’t mind me picking through the fridge a little.”

The swordsman grunts, and Sanji clicks on the stove.

* * *

 

“We’re not dancing.”

That old man is there again, in tights rather than a suit. Sanji’s sure the squeak is him now.

“Dancing?”

Sanji snorts, Zoro sprawled across the bed as if to claim it all to himself.

“No way am I letting myself be seen trotting around with your fat head.”

Zoro’s brow piques. He’s heaving a little, sweaty and gross as he mucks up the bed after a few good rounds in the yard with the aspiring soldiers here. They’d been easy pickings, so Zoro had tied these impossibly heavy weights to his ankles and wrists.

“We’re getting married,” Zoro deems to remind him, “you’re about to be seen doing a lot more with me than just dancing.”

Sanji musses up his blonde hair, dragging his hands across his face. “You pitiless bastard, I understand it’s an upgrade for you, but can you not remind me every chance you get?”

“An upgrade,” Zoro laughs, “I’m going to be the world’s greatest swordsman. As far as I can tell, I’m the one settling for less here.”

Sanji’s hands drop, eyes narrowing. “Oh? Say that again you slimy bastard.”

Zoro, still spread out as he were, breathing just a bit more evenly now, opens his good eye with a canine grin. “You should be honored that you get to walk the aisle with Roronoa Zoro you perverted cook.”

Sanji tackles him, not minding the way his hands slip a little against the skin as Zoro, in all his bulk, wrestles Sanji off and back down again, leering over him with that self-satisfied grin of his.

Sanji returns it, if only a bit more spiteful. 

“Hey Sanji,” Zoro says suddenly, hovering above him still, “what was that you were saying earlier, about pirates and marines?”

Sanji searches that face above him. Zoro hasn’t got him pinned anymore, but still Sanji lays there, caged in by that warmth.

“Just, that it’s lifestyle we share, Zoro, all of us. That’s why you always hear pirates going on about family and nakama. You never hear a marine say that, do you? You never hear that word, _family._ Nothing as intimate as nakama either. To share a way of life with someone, it just got me thinking, that’s all.”

Zoro seems uncharacteristically interested in Sanji’s nonsense.

“Color me curious,” Zoro edges him on.

Sanji tilts his head back against the mattress, staring at the door in thought. Wasn’t always easy whenever Zoro decided to stare you down. The cook had been impenetrable to it at first, but time had a way of screwing things up.

“Just, if you think about it, we’re already in something pretty deep here. I thought that thinking about it _that_ way would make this fake engagement easier, but then it got me thinking more, about how easy it would be for marines to get married. Pirates, though, well- most pirates I know anyway- went off with normal island girls. Usopp’s dad, Ace’s dad— we don’t know much about Luffy’s mom but who knows. Even. . . me, I was about to marry the daughter of a pirate, sure, but she herself had been a chocolatier and an entrepreneur.”

He glances back at Zoro, only to find that dumb crease in his brows, eyes squinting and Sanji knows he’s lost him.

_What right to we have to pretend we’re married? We chose a life that already binds us._

Zoro rolls over with a groan. “You’re thinking too much, cook. Your stupid brain’s gonna suffocate in there if you keep stuffing your head with so many thoughts.”

Those people, they always plant their seeds outside the ship, and then they leave them there. What’s the reason behind it?

“Cook, stop thinking,” Zoro warns-

“Duncan’s a pirate!”

Nami bursts in, face flushed. “Or he’s, he’s some sort of _pirate associate!”_

Sanji will never admit he'd jumped a little.

 _“Oh look,”_ Zoro states blandly, “the witch is here.”

Nami slams the door shut, ignoring him in favor of her newest discovery.

“I peeked at his ledgers. Trading posts my ass, he profits from loaning out land to pirates who want to run a bit of illegal business on the side, gives them legal residence and cover names.”

Sanji rolls over onto his stomach to compliment the tangerine beauty when Zoro gives a boarish grunt.

“Those people, the ones we'd met on the edge of the island,” the swordsman says to the ceiling, “I’d seen them in some of the pictures here. They’d been family.”

Sanji shifts up, frowning. “Why would they turn their back on family? Why shove them off like that?”

Zoro sighs, making a contented noise as he crosses his arms behind his head. “Who knows, shit cook. Guess it’s true what they say, in the end bonds that you choose to make are always stronger. Family don’t mean shit to the kind of people that choose to bond with money. Isn't that right, witch?”

Nami swats at his face, Zoro yelping as he scrambles back.

“So,” Nami flips her hair back, brow still a bit pinched as Zoro nurses a red cheek. “They get expelled for some reason, and then the cousin preys on them like a waiting vulture. Whether the Duchess knows of his little side-business, however, that’s what bothers me. If he were just your average bully then perhaps we could reason with her, but if she’s in on his little ventures then there’s no point in returning the titles when she owns the financial stability of this island.”

She sits down alongside them, humming. “Anyway, can’t we just nab a little bit? So many shiny things in one place, will she really notice?”

Zoro _tsks_ and she kicks him aside as she lays there alongside them.

* * *

 

“We’re not doing a portrait.”

Sanji closes the door on the old man, Zoro nowhere to be seen.

The bastard had escaped though the window, just like yesterday.

Luffy had yet to repel the Duchess with his abnormal appetite, though Sanji had the sneaking suspicion Nami has already acted upon her instinct, a suspicious bag hidden beneath their bed.

“It’s the centerpiece of every wedding I plan, my very own investment. Grand, isn’t it?”

Nami might be drooling. It’s a diamond the size of her pretty little head after all.

“That right there,” the Duchess nods at it, cushioned as it were on the pillared pedestal, “that’s my integrity as a business woman, my proof of heritage, and my worth as a staple member of this island and the seas that surround it. If anything were to ever fall through, that diamond would be enough to cover it all— in that, it serves as proof of the tenacity of my lineage, for never has someone of my blood been so in need so as to sell it.”

“Gorgeous,” Nami flutters about it, “stunning!”

Zoro yawns, crossing his arms as he eyes the swords on the wall.

“Are you ready,” she turns on the swordsman, “for your wedding? I hope you don’t mind the seats I’ve added, you can imagine how popular such an event is, after all.”

Zoro raises a brow at her. “Sure?”

Sometimes his lazy compliancy was useful.

“Hey cook,” Zoro nods his head towards wall once the Duchess leaves, Nami whimpering once the diamond is encased and locked soundly behind glass.

Sanji stands beside him, “Well?”

“That one,” Zoro says, “it’s the old hag, right?”

“I hope you don’t mean that fair lady we call _Duchess?”_

Still he looks, and sure, she’s in a good number of the portraits. As expected of someone that owned the damn house.

There she is on a horse, and once again in a garden he recognizes to be the violets out front. There she is again with that cousin of hers. . . there she is again with Duncan, but he finds it a bit unsettling the way she’s looking at him in this picture.

“You thinking,” Zoro considers, “what I’m thinking?”

That girl is there too, the one from the outskirts, the one that had been banished with her parents and that pauper husband of hers.

She’s got her hand in Duncan's, far prettier than the dirt had led on.

“I’m thinking there’s a reason why the Duchess adores weddings so much,” Sanji agrees quietly, “I think there’s a reason two guys getting it on— two _unlikely_   _pirates_ getting it on interests her so much.”

There’s something entirely too intriguing about the forbidden and the uncommon for someone that had everything, for someone that had everything but what was forbidden to them.

Why live her life through the weddings of other nobles like herself, when she could live the forbidden romance through the two of them?

“Well shit,” Sanji sighs, lighting a smoke, “I’m guessing we’re not going to like what we find out.”

“I don’t think we need the witch to do any digging,” Zoro edges in to whisper, “guessing that rich girl broke off her engagement for _true love,_ go figure. Sir Duncan here probably didn’t take that too well, and this woman, this _Duchess—”_

“Of course she goes alone with it, because she’s infatuated with someone she can’t have,” Sanji sighs in confirmation. All from a few measly photos.

He plucks the cigarette from his lips and breaths out a wisp of smoke, peering over at the swordsman. “So? Do we continue on with this farce, or do we tell those poor saps out there that they're shit out of luck and need to move house? They can’t win if the literal physical prosperity of this island is against them.”

Footsteps behind them.

Zoro’s got a hand to his sword, thumb jacking it up a bit as Sanji tosses back a displeased glance.

“Or,” Nami sticks out a playful tongue, “we play along and rob her of her lineage.”

* * *

  

They lay there in bed together, staring at the same blue ceiling.

“In the end,” Sanji murmurs, “you gotta kinda feel bad for her.”

Zoro grunts.

Whether he agrees with Sanji, however, is unknown.

“Do you think,” Sanji wets his lips, “do you think the real reason she was interested in us is because we’re pirates— because we use the word family the same way those that are born together do? Do you think, Zoro, she saw us as the forbidden romance she couldn’t have, the intermarriage between family members?”

This time Zoro’s grunt isn’t anything amused.

“Shut up.”

Sanji blinks at that ceiling for what feels like the first time in hours.

“Shut up, stupid cook. I told you to stop thinking so damn much, didn’t I?”

Zoro rolls over onto his other side, facing way from Sanji as he grumbles. “We’re family because we have the same dreams. Nothing wrong with falling in love with a dream, or the person that carries it.”

Sanji stares at that back then, clad in a plain shirt. The hair at the nape of his neck is trimmed neatly, skin tanned and arched forward.

“What do you think about my dream,” Sanji asks, suddenly feeling for all the world like he needs to know.

When Zoro doesn’t answer Sanji clambers over to his side, peering over the boy to get a good look at his face, scrunched up in concentrated sleep as it were. “Zoro. Hey, Zoro.”

“It’s a dream, cook,” Zoro grumbles, “just like any other.”

Sanji frowns, though he doesn’t move. “But. . . it’s like the difference between a rare bird and a Phoenix,” Sanji whispers, “they both exist in theory, but only one exists in reality, despite how elusive it might be.”

Sanji leans over just a bit more. “What I’m saying, Zoro, is that there’s a clear possibility with yours, even if you are a stupid bastard.”

Zoro cracks an eye open to glance up at him, the moon in his eye as he watches Sanji. The cook swallows, allowing himself just this one chance to behave nicely. “Zoro, you’ll become the world’s greatest swordsman, there’s no doubt about it.”

Zoro's quiet, staring down the wall before him in thought.

Sanji falls onto his back then, chewing on his own thoughts. He taps his fingers against the bedspread, feet drumming along gently.

“Dammit cook,” Zoro snarls suddenly, sitting up with an irritable swing of his body, “I told you to stop with all that thinking! What is it you’re trying to work around anyway?”

Sanji doesn’t realize it’s a laugh that’s bubbling up from his throat at first, but it leaks through the corners of his mouth before he has any notion to stop it.

“I don’t even know,” he chuckles, “I really don’t. You wanna know something else, shitty seaweed? That's the problem. The whole feasibility of all this is a problem, Zoro. The fact that this could very well happen and the world won't explode- that's a problem."

He smiles some more, and Zoro juts his jaw out, cheeks flushing as he glares at the door.

“Your dream,” Zoro manages eventually, “I know of one Phoenix in this world, and his name is Marco. That means, out there, is at least one All Blue. So stop all your whining and bullshitting, cook, how can you believe in my dream if you don’t even appreciate your own?”

“Oh,” Sanji grins at him, “maybe I don’t need to worry about mine then, if you’re willing to put that much thought into it. And what about me, Zoro, what about the person that carries that silly dream?”

Color spreads to his neck, back where the hair is neatly trimmed and the skin is dark.

“Why you wanna hear me say something embarrassing like that?”

“Hm,” Sanji stretches, working out a few kinks as he rolls his body, “embarrassing like what?”

Zoro glares even harder at that door. “Just, whatever, perv cook. You’re the only one of your kind too, y’know that? One All Blue, one shitty cook.”

Sanji thinks there’s a compliment somewhere in there, but he's too tired to dig it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll come back for errors later zzz

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: threesipsmore.tumblr.com


End file.
